


Your liquors seeped to me, dulling and stilling

by emptymasks



Category: Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier & Related Fandoms, Rebecca - Levay/Kunze
Genre: Alternate Ending, Character Death, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Graphic Description of Corpses, Master/Servant, Murder, Older Woman/Younger Woman, POV First Person, be gay do crime, not what i expected to write today, suspected suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25056820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emptymasks/pseuds/emptymasks
Summary: Time stopped as I stared down at the body.I couldn't cry. I couldn't scream. There was some sort of pressure in my skull, but my body was frozen.Maxim's pretty, green eyes gazed up at me.
Relationships: Maxim de Winter/Narrator (Rebecca), Mrs. Danvers/I, Mrs. Danvers/Ich, Mrs. Danvers/Narrator, Narrator (Rebecca)/Mrs. Danvers (Rebecca)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 9





	Your liquors seeped to me, dulling and stilling

Manderley awoke in screams.

_"Not again!"_

_"How cruel!"_

_"This house is cursed!"_

I was already getting dressed when the chaos erupted and barely had time to slip on a pair of shoes before I was being whisked down the endless staircase. I wouldn't have been able to count how many bodies I slid and stumbled past.

Someone, one of the cooks perhaps, took hold of my wrist and led me out and away from the house and around to the rickety wooden stairs that led down to the beach. When I paused on the first step he almost pulled us both down.

There was already a crowd gathered on the seafront. The waves were moaning, muddy and diseased as it spat out the foam that frothed around it's swollen mouth and yellowed teeth.

"Christ Thomas, you brought her down here?" Frith spoke from where the wooden banister melted into harsh, cold stone. He had his arm around a trembling mass of brown tweed.

The man shuddered and looked up at me as I descended. I would have barely recognised it was Frank, if not for that jacket. His face was red, eyes and cheeks puffed out like a baby making it's first cry.

"Mrs de Winter, you shouldn't..." He hiccupped out his words. "You shouldn't see this."

"Shouldn't see what?" I walked towards him, reaching out a hand and placing it on his arms that were so tightly wound around himself.

His eye's flickered to where the majority of the staff were gathered.

I walked as though in a trance. Frank made a weak attempt to stop me, but I glided away from him.

The hysterics got louder as I approached and someone looked my way before nudging the others and they parted, peeled away from the monster they were hiding.

Time stopped as I stared down at the body.

I couldn't cry. I couldn't scream. There was some sort of pressure in my skull, but my body was frozen.

Maxim's pretty, green eyes gazed up at me.

He couldn't have been in the water for more than twelve hours or so, but the sea had quickly marked its prize.

Seaweed was woven between the button holes of his heavy coat, and ran up along his chest until it almost looped around his neck like some overgrown noose. One of his arms jutted out just above the elbow at an unnatural angle and I quickly moved my eyes as my stomach gave the smallest whimper.

And his face... His handsome face was caved in above the brow bone on his left side. It was like one of those old Greek sculptures that had been damaged and lost a chunk of itself. Beautiful and pale marble lying untouched and so close to the damage that if you closed one eye and covered the missing part with your hand, you wouldn't suspect there was anything wrong with it.

I was almost tempted to do exactly that. To see if he would look alive.

But the results of the impact with some rock stained his hair with rust, caked it with grime. And those eyes... still and unblinking.

"Come on, ma'am, let's get you inside," Clarice's hands on my shoulders were as gentle as possible and yet the contact still made me jump.

When I turned around, there were so many eyes upon me. What did they think? What did they suspect?

I nodded to Clarice and made my way back to the house. I didn't need to look at him any longer.

The whisperings continued as I made my way off the beach.

"Poor man, I suppose he just couldn't take it. Perhaps he saw this as the only reason to be with Rebecca again. After all, it's Rebecca's balcony windows that were left open."

"Or, and don't look at me like that, but, well, killing himself so soon after her body was found... doesn't that make it seem like he really did do it? Even if it was an accident?"

"It sure doesn't make him look any more innocent."

"Exactly."

"He was hardly a murderer, come now."

Whatever reasons they seemed to think of, it seemed they were all in agreement. Whether it was out of grief or guilt: Maxim de Winter had jumped and killed himself.

Clarice put a hand on me as my body trembled ever so slightly, but I managed to control it by the time we had gotten back inside the house.

"Frith already called the police, Ma'am. He figured you might not be in the state to do so yourself."

"Thank him for me, will you?" I put one foot onto the staircase and looked up. The air seemed strange. But I knew where I was going. "You can go now, Clarice. I'll call you if I need you."

She eyed me with concern. "If you're sure, Ma'am." She dipped her head and went back outside.

I took deep breaths as I ascended, my footsteps echoing. It struck me that I might be the only one in the house. Well, apart from _her_.

The door to Rebecca's bedroom was open a crack and I slid in, barely pushing it open.

I almost expected her to be stood proud, curtains billowing around her, not daring to touch her, as I had so often found her. Instead, she was kneeling on the floor, bottles and rags around her.

"You'll hurt yourself if you stay knelt like that," She didn't jump as I spoke. It was impossible to creep up on her.

"Well someone had to get the scuff marks out of the wood before anyone saw them, Madam."

She seemed satisfied and placed the lid back on the jar of polish. I titled by head back and forth, watching as the early morning sun gleamed off the wood.

Before she could brace her palms against the now spotless floor, I held out a hand for her. She hesitated for only a moment, before she took it and I pulled slightly to help her up.

She rolled her shoulders back as she stood and towered over me.

She didn't remove her hand from mine.

The cool air raised the hair on my skin. I was only dressed in my slip, with a coat thrown hastily on top.

"You'll catch your death like this, Madam," She said as she slid her hand against me and popped open the only button I'd managed to fasten.

I smiled.

My eyes wandered over, past the balcony, and I tugged her behind me as I walked to its edge.

The sea seemed much calmer from up here, almost blending in with the sky on the horizon. I breathed in and it tasted like the air from the mountains near Monte Carlo. The anxiety I felt them, but also such hope, knowing things were about to change.

"Do you regret any of it?" Her voice was quiet and I turned away from a hollow, burnt out love and looked at her.

Those confident and oh so sure of herself eyes that burned, always burned, seemed to flicker. A flame fearing being blown out. I'd never seen her with such an expression.

"Danny," The word broke out of my mouth in a sigh and I shook my head, my body rising onto my tiptoes as I reached for her lips.

"None of it." I said when I parted from her. "None at all."

Then that familiar gnawing at the back of my head chimed in.

"Do you?"

"No," Mrs Danvers smiled. "Mrs de Winter."

**Author's Note:**

> be gay do crime
> 
> fellas is it gay to fall in love with a married woman and then her husband kills her and remarries you want to hate her but end up falling for her and conspiring to kill her husband with her?
> 
> so basically i have been having many ideas for drabbles for danvers/ich and was going to make a drabble collection fic that would have had a fair bit of smut in it but instead i read  
> [sincerelybluevase's](https://sincerelybluevase.tumblr.com/post/622627309442236416/careful-madam-chapter-two) latest danvers/ich fics and got so many thoughts and somehow this was what ended up being written
> 
> which was just very surprising for me because i actually like maxim (the musical version, more specifically jan ammann's version) and relate to certain things that are going on with him and i really fell like jan's version has been through emotional abuse and just overall maxim in the musical is much more sympathetic and rebecca's death is likely an accident (or at least believably an accident) unlike the book. which i wasn't aware of and i'm still not very aware of the differences between the book and the musical other than book! maxim being a complete arse.
> 
> also please let me know if the first person is okay. i've written a rebecca fic before from ich/i/narrator's point of view but wrote it in third person because i don't feel that comfortable writing first person but i tried. 
> 
> this is also very much the darkest thing i've ever written, the first lines i thought of for this were lines describing maxim's face. who knew i, someone who's writing seems to always turn to fluff because i'm soft, had this in me
> 
> title is from Poppies in July by Sylvia Plath


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